


An Interlude In Red And Gold

by Rhymefire



Series: Unto the Breach [3]
Category: Sunless Skies
Genre: F/M, Madness, Romance, canon-compliant creepiness, coping with your crushing insanity by manipulating others
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2020-08-13 16:18:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 6,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhymefire/pseuds/Rhymefire
Summary: A companion piece to 'My Captain's Keeper.'The Sly Mistress may be obsessed with the Stolid Crewman. Or she might be in love. Either way, she's going to convince him to spend the rest of his life with her.





	1. Acquiring the Orphean

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter of this companion story lines up with a chapter of 'My Captain's Keeper.' I would suggest reading that story first, otherwise this one may not make much sense!

When the Sly Mistress becomes captain, she isn’t surprised. Why should she be? She has spent the last year implanting the idea in Amelia Whitlock’s head. She has spent the last year whispering honeyed words into Amelia’s ear and fanning her obsession with the Blue Kingdom to a fevered pitch. Her new position as captain means that she has won. The game that she’s been playing for the last year is over.

When the dying Amelia Whitlock gives the Sly Mistress her position, ship and all her worldly goods, the Sly Mistress is in the state of ecstatic despair that always comes hand in hand with a victory.

The ship is hers.

The crew is hers.

The black box is hers.

Now she has to find a new game to play. She needs a new deception to weave.

She likes failures more. A failure means that the Sly Mistress must sharpen her knives and coat her tongue with silver. That she has something to do. Something to focus on. Something to obsess over.

She needs these games. They give her a reason to wrap herself in a guise of sanity. Without these games, she falters and begins to play at slowly destroying her guise of sanity until people realize exactly how dangerous she is. The last time she played that game, she had been put in the Bethlehem and it had been intolerably boring.

She can’t stand boredom.

The crew is nervous at first when they are informed that she is the new captain, but it’s too easy to assuage their fears. She recruits the Incautious Driver. She picks them out of the crowd of hopefuls because the wreckage of their previous locomotive is still burning. They toe plaintively at the rubble like a child and say, “I’m in need of work.”

When they ask how long she’s been captain, she checks her pocketwatch. “Two hours,” she says.

They grin. “Sign me up, captain.”

She likes them. They’re interesting.

She hates them. They settle the crew immediately with laughter and a poker game. She can’t win the crew over as her new game, because it’s already done.

She finds a new game when a man approaches her, looking to sign onto her engine. The Sly Mistress’ breath catches in her throat when she sees him. He’s large and well-muscled. His hands are calloused and his handshake is firm and businesslike. Although his clothes are not as expensive as hers, they are clean and neat. His expression is serious and doesn’t flicker as he speaks to her.

He is so obviously put-together, so composed, that she immediately wants to rumple him. She wants to rake her fingers through his combed hair until it stands on end. He would look very handsome underneath her, pleading and gasping for breath. He would look beautiful with his composure irrevocably shattered.

His use-name is ‘Stolid Crewman.’ It suits him so perfectly that she can’t help but laugh and bat her eyes. He blinks steadily and starts negotiating pay.

She watches him aboard the _Orphean_. He is like her in that he needs to be kept occupied. He is unlike her in that he takes comfort from organizing the hold and writing out spreadsheets. He writes most nights in a leather-bound journal. She considers reading it, but that would be too easy. The fun of her games isn’t forcing people to do things, but convincing them to choose them.

Brutes strong-arm and intimidate people. Subtle work is harder. She prides herself on subtlety. It is why she loves her use-name so much. It takes true skill to brand herself as someone dangerous and then convince people that she is harmless and can be trusted with their most intimate secrets.

Her seduction of the Stolid Crewman will be all the sweeter if he is the one to invite her into bed. It would be too easy to push him into the sheets and convince him with biting kisses. The game would be over too soon.

She reveals tidbits of information to him while he sits in front of her and studiously copies her stories into a blank notebook. Usually, people feel a compulsion to share information in return, but the Stolid Crewman is free of that urge. He absorbs her words silently. It is like flinging her words into the depths of a pit.

Throughout the whole encounter, he only speaks twice. The first when he began this encounter. He’d seen her messy handwriting, scowled and said, “Stories are useless unless people can read them. I’ll copy those down.”

The second time is when she shows him her soul. His expression doesn’t flicker. “Why is your soul in a bottle?” he asks. His voice is utterly colourless. This is how he speaks.

When she gets extremely drunk at a party, he dutifully follows her like a large shadow and stops her from getting into too much trouble. He guides her back to the engine and coaxes her into bed. Stolid leaves without a backward glance. She giggles and bites her pillow with glee. This game will last a good while. She loves this game.


	2. Counterpoint

He is a good counterpoint. They have business at Magdalene’s. The Sly Mistress takes on the role of a jilted lover and enacts a heartrending scenario with a guest there. The deception lifts her spirits.

Her spirits buoy further as Stolid neatly accepts payment and slips the gold into her purse. She would have left without payment. The diversion was reward enough for her, but Stolid is much more practical than that.

His practicality comes in useful when she purchases upgrades for her locomotive on a whim. She is attracted immediately to a canning station and a better gun. The gun is a sleek instrument of murder and the canning station comes with gleaming knives and tools to rip flesh apart and pack it into neat parcels. While she wanders the corridors lost in thoughts of knives slicing through meat and turning everything a pretty, pretty red, Stolid barks orders at the crew and workers installing the upgrades.

The crew snaps to attention at his commands. Use-names speak to the heart of a person. While he would rather serve, he is comfortable giving orders as well. The versatility is quite attractive. She likes the idea that the crew can recognize that he is something unique and interesting.

When he takes the Incautious Driver to their family doctor, she is concerned at first that he is trying to usurp her position. She quickly realizes the folly of that thought and laughs to be rid of it. He is only trying to make the engine as efficient as possible. He’s scented a potential weakness in the Incautious Driver and will not suffer it aboard her engine.

Another piece falls into place when she gets the black box. The weighty bulk of it is stunningly intriguing. It is the first time that Stolid challenges her. He dislikes the “talk of hiding things from ‘certain laws of the heavens,’” and balks when she tells him to wheel it aboard.

She bites back a sharp grin at the firm look in his eyes. He does not raise his voice. It is flat and hard as stone. He speaks to her as though she is one of the crew. Beneath him.

The insubordination runs through her veins like a thrill. She likes it.

She smiles coyly and steps close to him. Close enough to feel the heat of him. “I simply must have this box,” she purrs. “It was left to me by the previous captain.” She steps closer to see if he will retreat. He doesn’t. He doesn’t move a muscle, but his eyes land on hers. “This puzzle is going to be solved.”

She links her arm through Stolid’s and coaxes him into taking a walk with her in Titania. He is just as cool during the walk, but she is making progress. He doesn’t go on walks with the others. Only her. He speaks more often but is content to listen to her chatter enthusiastically about their surroundings.

When Incautious approaches him, she wants to dash their brains out. She wants to rip the concealed knives from her bodice and plunge them into their eye sockets. She doesn’t. It is acceptable to think such thoughts, but unacceptable to act on them.

It would be unnatural if she didn’t long for the kill now and then. Her family deals in murder and death, after all.

He opens up more at the Circus. It is nice to sit beside him and listen to his quiet asides. He shows them around and takes obvious pleasure in it.

Obvious to her.

Not to others.

The Stolid Crewman lives up to his use-name and his tour is stiff and perfunctory. His expression is still closed-off, but this is a habit for him. He chose to give them a tour. That is meaningful. Although the Incautious Driver joins the tour, Stolid only looks at her.

The night is perfected when the clown sets himself on fire and she gets to watch the flames dance. He screams in agony and the Sly Mistress laughs in open delight at the stench of burned flesh.

Someone is injured and she watches Stolid patch up the man neatly and efficiently. He has clearly had practice with this. She wants to pry his past out from between his teeth.

But it will be sweeter when he offers the information freely.

So she waits.

He doesn’t challenge her authority in front of the crew, but privately he argues with her. She loves it. He is not intimidated at all by her rank or sharp intelligence. She knows that he knows she is cunning. She can see it on him. In the way he considers her at times when he thinks she is not paying him any attention.

The desire to know everything about him gnaws at her bones until she breaks into his cabin to search it. She means to search it. She wants to. Desperately. Instead, she drinks all of his rum. He finds her lounging prettily on his bed and his eyelids flicker minutely when he sees her there.

It is unusual for her to long so strongly for a conquest. She has seduced men before but never wanted them so badly. She wants to crawl into his skin. If she could, she would slip down his throat and make a nest in his ribcage so she can lay a finger on his heart and feel it beating. She wants to be inside his bones.

She wants him to want her there.

She can’t think of why this could be, because whenever she tries to think about it she is lost in thoughts of him.

He likes seeing her play her games. She stands on a crate in Port Prosper on a tour and begins a flowery speech designed to impress those around her. The others eat it up with a spoon, but he hangs back and watches. She gleans snippets of speculation by watching him in this new environment. She suspects he used to be a Tackety. Only Tackety’s stand a certain way when confronted with a roomful of Stovepipes. Only former Tackety’s stand the way he does.


	3. The Most Important Game

It should be the culmination of a plot when he moves into her room. It isn’t. It is a miscalculation on her part. She miscalculates the dangers in Carillon and comes out of the gardens haggard and frightened. Her sleek elegance is shattered. Her confidence torn into rags.

She hides it for as long as she is able. During the day it is easy. She already hides the beautiful red and gold that permeate her world. She can hide the fear as well.

But not at night.

This is clear when she steps into her room to find that he has moved his bunk into it. He sits on her bed as though it is where he belongs. “You’ve been having nightmares,” he says. His expression betrays nothing. “I’m going to stay in here from now on to help out.” He pauses. Hesitates. “If that’s alright.”

He watches her calmly and she is rooted with the effort of not launching herself at him. He holds out a glass of warm milk. It smells of honey. She takes it from him and sets it down on a table. She allows herself to hug him.

No longer than five seconds. She commits it to memory. It is soothing and not enough all at the same time. She is greedy for more but releases him quickly. She couldn’t bear it if he left.

She is in love with him.

This game is now the most important one she has ever played.

She will apply all her sly wit to this game until he loves her too.

It feels different when she takes him out to tea now that she knows the depths of her obsession. He holds the fine china carefully. How strong is he? Could he grind it to dust? Crush it in his palm? She isn’t entirely sure if he would stay with her if he knew how dangerous she is.

She has seven knives concealed on her body right now.

They feel as natural to her as her bones.

To give him a concrete reason to stay, she gives him the title of Quartermaster. It is a change in name only. He’s already carved a place into her locomotive and her heart.

She likes taking him to Magdalene’s. She’d like taking him to Bethlehem even more, but that’s too far away now. Both places deal with madness and it feels good to show him off there. It feels like a victory, if an intangible one.

It doesn’t matter if she sees the world in red and gold. She can still lead a successful, happy life.

He doesn’t mind so much when she blows her black box open. Or when she takes him on a midnight run to steal souls from a ruin. Or when she welcomes the fact that the Repentant Devil killed a stowaway.

His eyes land on her and she can feel him thinking. Each time, his eyes tick away from her quietly. He doesn’t step away.


	4. Gallery

They take the Incautious Driver to the nature reserve. She would have gone with them to the enormous tree, but Stolid grips her arm loosely. She could break free easily but enjoys his touch. It is the first time he has voluntarily touched her.

He is the most reserved man she’s ever met.

He insists that they all bathe before boarding the engine. She imagines it would be nice to share a bath with him and lets her eyes linger meaningfully. He doesn’t notice. They each bathe alone, in total privacy.

She imagines that he would clean himself quickly. He wouldn’t see the point in relaxing in the water. Stolid would scrub himself thoroughly. She’d have to twine her arms around his neck to get him to linger.

Later.

In Titania, he seeks out her company for the first time. He takes her to an art gallery. He looks even stiffer than normal and holds himself ramrod straight. She finds it charming.

He stays that way until the crew catches wind of their date and joins in. Then the nervous stiffness seeps out of him and he is as stiff as he normally is. It is disappointing but even now he moves with the perfect economy of motion that she has grown to admire in him.

She smiles and imagines flaying her crew alive until their ruined date is over.

He sniffs a touch disdainfully when the hunting club is scared of her hunting trophies. “Babies,” he mutters. She grins and laughs.


	5. Hoarded Secrets

Eleutharia Gold is the first thing she finds that reduces his inhibitions. She’s seen him drink all manner of alcohol and it does nothing. Eleutharia Gold makes him unspool and lounge against her like a content cat. She soaks in his warmth greedily and enjoys the feel of him pressed against her side. Stolid talks freely. Most would call it idle chatter about places he’s been or what he’s eaten, but the Sly Mistress knows that there is no such thing as useless information.

She commits his words to memory and swears that she will root out all his secrets.

She is not sure what she will do with them. Normally, she would leverage secrets against their owners. She doesn’t want to hurt Stolid. Perhaps she will just hoard them.

He breathes in deeply and tips his head towards hers. “You smell like wildflowers,” he says. Most men would have slurred it. She is slurring her words slightly. Stolid doesn’t slur, even now, but his words are less precise than they normally are. He normally speaks in clipped, efficient syllables. Her old elocution teachers would have gladly killed for the chance to hear him speak.

Once they leave the shop, he catches sight of a wounded man. The Sly Mistress would have walked on, or watched his agonized tremors, but Stolid snaps to attention (as much as he can while Eleutharian Gold courses through him) and carries him into the bar.

It is clearer than ever that he has had experience dealing with wounds. His hands look beautiful stained with blood. His bedside manner leaves much to be desired. “Shut up,” he tells his patient. “Don’t be such a baby.”

The patient has had two legs broken and an arm torn out of its socket.

Nights are always difficult for her. They always have been. Daytime is easy because she is supposed to be in motion.

Nights are for lying down and staying quiet. She grows bored and restless. She ends up pacing relentlessly.

Tonight, Stolid sits in her bed, ramrod stiff. She smiles coyly. Is this his way of asking her to bed? She sits beside him. She is keenly aware of the silk of her nightgown against her skin. His nightclothes are simple cotton. Stolid nods jerkily and lies down. “Goodnight,” he says and falls asleep.

She is shocked. Then she is unreasonably pleased. Nobody has ever done that before. It seems foolish to get out of bed and pace when he’s lying in it of his own volition. She sighs and settles against him.

The next night, he returns to his own bed. She glares at the offending piece of furniture while his back is turned. Stolid would be angry if she tossed his bed out the airlock. Instead, she slips into his bed as though she belongs there.

At first, he lies there stiffly. Eventually, he turns and curls an arm gently around her.

To show him that they can be alike in this way if he desires it, she goes out of her way to help a Rubbery. In her childhood, she started out killing them when bored or for practice. Her whole family did. Assassins must learn to kill quickly and silently, but those skills must be honed. Nobody cares if a Rubbery dies slowly and loudly.

When prompted, he praises her.

He shares important information freely for the first time after a fierce battle with some marauders. He is sitting in bed staring at a chart of some sort and she curls up against him wondering if the fight gets his blood pulsing as it does hers.

He pushes the chart aside and quietly rearranges himself so that she is more comfortable.

He begins the conversation and triumph thrills through her. He grew up by the Docks and listened avidly to the stories of sea captains. It is not what she had expected, but she wasn’t sure what to expect. It suits him. He doesn’t mention family, so she deliberately brings up hers. She leaves out the arts of the assassin, but mentions the bloodlust and quicksilver cunning.

His fingers flex minutely as though he would like to hold her. Someone else wouldn’t notice it, but the Sly Mistress has fully attuned herself to him.

The crew loves the Stolid Crewman because he is stern and harsh with them. He is not afraid to snap or discipline them, but he is also fair.

She enjoys being the only one who can see through this. Who he allows to see through this.


	6. The Most Dangerous Game

Stolid scraps his bed and builds her a bookshelf from its remains. He looks at a spot on the wall just above her left shoulder. “No point in wasting space,” he says. She grins and doesn’t launch herself at him.

They go on a journey in Wood’s Deep. She prepares by sharpening her knives. Stolid prepares by packing supplies into neat containers. She is the only one that doesn’t have to carry a package. Stolid is strong and carries twice as much as everyone else.

She first sees emotion visibly affect him when the trees speak in Correspondence and Discordance. Sweat beads on his brow. A tree explodes into flame two feet from him. The crew scream and recoil. Stolid flinches. She takes his hand and strokes meaningless patterns into his palm with her index finger. He meets her eyes gratefully and then looks away as though embarrassed by this show of emotion.

The adrenalin rush turns his eyes a deep peligin. The colour is there and gone. His eyes have always been blue, but she never thought she would see peligin again when she came up to the High Wilderness.

Peligin belongs in the Neath. Peligin belongs to the deep waters where sea-beasts swim. She doesn’t like the thought that he has such deep ties to that place. It so far away. He belongs with her.

She wonders if he is running away from something. She wouldn’t mind that. She could grant him safe harbour or someone to run with. She ran away from the family business. There is no reason he can’t run from the Undersea.

They can run together. They can be two objects in continuous motion.

It will work as long as he doesn’t look back.

He gets a pet. A Grizzled Blemmigan. It is a creature from the Neath. He lets it clamber onto his shoulder, so she fakes pleasure at the new development. The horrid creature stays in the engine room when it’s not riding on his shoulder.

They get a new ship. Stolid moves all his things into her cabin without a word. She is horribly pleased, although doesn’t comment. He is steadily creeping towards her like a wary cat. She will do nothing that risks impeding his progress.

It is the Parzifal that reveals the Stolid Crewman’s secret. He has a notched bone harpoon with him when they board the Parzifal. The crew is confused and looks curiously at it, but they don’t realize what it is. She knows.

She remembers a flash of peligin eyes and his unusual strength.

She has never seen a monster hunter before now. One of her brothers killed one once and brought back the harpoon as a trophy. Her brother hadn’t been able to use the hungry weapon and had destroyed it in a rare moment of caution.

The Stolid Crewman is a monster hunter. He belongs to the Undersea. He is a Neath-creature.

She needs him. She wants him. He belongs to her.

This game is surprisingly dangerous. Without realizing it, he has scattered landmines all around her. How is she to lure him to her side if he belongs to the Undersea?


	7. Competition

The harpoon finds a home beneath their bed. She tries not to resent its intrusion. Perhaps it needs to be close to him. Perhaps he wants to dream of the Undersea. Does he have hunting dreams?

Perhaps she has sensed this undercurrent of danger in him from the beginning and it drew her to him.

She knows he kills with it.

A colony of pardoner-eels darts through the air. The Stolid Crewman dons his sky-suit and casually holds his harpoon. She resists the urge to follow him. If she does, he will put it away. She wants to know how he kills. Is he fast? Silent? Does he smile?

When he comes back, a pardoner eel is hooked on the barbed tip of his harpoon. He is serene.

She examines the body later. His prey has been expertly stabbed through the spinal cord. Death was instantaneous. Did he assassinate sea-beasts like this in the Undersea?

She wishes she could have watched.

It is clear that the harpoon cannot be taken away from him. It is unthinkable to separate someone from their murder weapons. She would feel lost without her favourite knife.

The next night, nightmares make them cling to each other. She is triumphant. He didn’t go to the harpoon for comfort. It is powerful, but it is also bone. She is warm flesh.

In the Nature Reserve, he is lured to the hunt by a group of men with guns. He leaves the harpoon behind. The beast is brought back alive.

She is exuberant and can’t help squealing happily. Either he is unwilling to kill with another weapon or the hunters weren’t after blood. Perhaps the harpoon will not tolerate being used to merely wound.

He is adaptable. He is able to live without it. He is not as serene as when he killed the pardoner-eel, but he is at peace. She has never truly had competition before. Definitely not from a harpoon. She plans to worm her way into the core of the Stolid Crewman until she is just as much a part of him as the harpoon is.

Experimentally, she gets a better canning station. More instruments to rend flesh apart. Stolid is more interested in the drawers it comes with.


	8. Neathbound

She was wrong about the harpoon. Partially wrong. Not entirely.

The truth of it is revealed when they sit on a rooftop in New Winchester. He leans against her and talks about his mother. She was the monster hunter and the original owner of the harpoon, but the harpoon belongs to him now.

She is sure of it.

She wouldn’t dare touch it. It would recoil away or bite her, she thinks. It would not suffer her skin.

The harpoon has accepted the Stolid Crewman as its new owner. He is a monster hunter just as much as his mother is, though he is far from the Undersea and doesn’t kill with it that often.

She has no doubt the harpoon will wait patiently for him to realize this.

She wonders if he has eaten the flesh of sea-beasts. Everyone knows that monster hunters do that. Perhaps he can’t be called a very good monster hunter, as he doesn’t hunt that often.

A pardoner-eel is nothing compared to the lesser terrors of the sea.

She tells him of her family. How they treated each other. The connections between them. Stolid’s mother was distant and cared more for the hunt than anything. Her family hunted men, but they cared for each other. For the most part.

He wakes one night mumbling about oily flesh and the feel of it sliding down his throat. He has eaten sea-beast flesh before. She is unsurprised and soothes him back to sleep. It is not uncommon for sailors to eat sea-beasts, but not the way monster hunters do.

Monster hunters eat it raw and dripping. It strengthens them. It sharpens them. It hones them as she hones her knives. The Stolid Crewman is a living weapon.

She likes it.

They swap secrets. The Sly Mistress tells him of her coded letters, but not to ply information from him. She tells him because she wants to.

He shows her the harpoon and lets her examine it. She runs her fingertips along it and feels the bone shiver hungrily. Hunger is too weak a word.

It starves as a wolf does. It is feral and unrelenting. She has never felt bloodlust like this before. It makes her feel like a child. It is hungrier than Those Who Seek the Name. She has never felt need like this before.

He tells her of the first time his mother attempted to become a monster hunter. He nursed her back to health. Later, she went out again and returned with an enormous carcass. She ate it raw and dripping. He watched silently from the corner.

She has no secrets to match this. She nuzzles against him in thanks and smiles coquettishly when he becomes nervous and puts space between them.


	9. Lumps

She buys a bag of rubbery lumps to see what he will do. He eats them mechanically and without enjoyment. She is adept at reading his moods by now.

She thinks they taste fine.


	10. Prizes

At the Brabazon Workworld, women and men flirt with Stolid. He doesn’t notice, which is the only thing that keeps her from dashing their brains out.

What do those simpering fools know about him? Nothing. They see a prize, but he’s so much more than that. He is uncomfortable with their attentions. She is gratified by this. He will choose her in the end.

It’s inevitable now. This game is slowly reaching its conclusion. She will not feel upset when it is over. How unusual.


	11. Hooks

He realizes the connection between them when someone else points it out. She has to explain their dynamic to him. Stolid is adamant that nothing will change and she can only smile.

He drops a kiss on her cheek thoughtlessly. There is nothing special to mark the occasion. It is just one of the many nights when her nightmares wake her and he soothes her to sleep.

She kisses his cheek the next morning as though it is her right. She is terrified that he will turn away, but he doesn’t. He smiles.

The Stolid Crewman’s smile is small and soft. It crooks his lips upwards. It is private and meant only for her.

Later, she suggests that he carries the harpoon with him. She isn’t threatened by its hold on him anymore, because she also has a hold on him. They can share him. There is more than enough of the Stolid Crewman to go around. They both have their hooks in his heart.

He explains the finer points of how the weapon works, and she can only admire him.


	12. Peligin Eyes

He is gentle with her. Stolid allows weakness in her where he would not tolerate it in others.

She wakes in a homicidal, bloody mood and is fully intent on burning one of their artifacts. It has been taunting her in dreams. It appears in corners and in vases. It appeared in Stolid’s arms tonight and that’s too much to bear. She will not share him with the artifact.

He holds her arms firmly until she explains. Explaining feels like spitting teeth out, but his calm gaze makes her try anyway. He won’t let her burn it, but lets her offer it to the Waste-Waif as a consolation.

Two crewmen have a fit of madness during a battle and the Stolid Crewman descends upon them like a stealthy bear. He snatches them by the throat, one in each hand, and drags them into a room. He locks them in and ignores the pounding. Snaps at the others to get back to work and stop staring.

Their throats are bruised, but they are calm when he collects them.

The next time the artifact appears in her dreams, he lets her burn it.

It is his frugal nature that saves them. He orders the crew to scavenge the abandoned town in Hybras without a thought. If he hadn’t done that, they would have starved.

The mutiny splits the crew in two. They lose most of their crew and supplies, but it’s worth it.

The gunshot that woke them stains Stolid’s eyes peligin.

She gets to see him carve someone open with his harpoon. It is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. A frothing woman darts towards him and he pivots. He jabs. It is a rapid, economical motion. No energy is wasted. The bone harpoon pierces her gut without a sound. It is sharp enough that the rabid woman doesn’t realize she’s been impaled until Stolid twists his wrist and pulls it out. Skin tears like velvet and her organs pour out of her like a deluge. Stolid is serene. His gaze flicks away from her when she dies. He is smart enough to know that a dying beast can still bite.

The Sly Mistress could watch him kill all day.

She will replay this moment in her mind’s eye to soothe herself later. Or when bored. Or simply when she wants to.

The bone harpoon is clean. Blood doesn’t cling to it. Or perhaps it drinks the blood. When the battle is over and they’re cleaning the blood up, his eyes are still peligin. She waits with bated breath, desperate for him to kill again so she can watch.

She is as hungry for bloodshed as the harpoon is. She wonders if it shivers at his touch. She does.

Once the locomotive is clean, the peligin drains from his eyes. She mourns. The Sly Mistress carries her daggers, hoping for a reason to spill blood.

Someone is cooked alive by a burst of steam. Stolid meets her eyes and she isn’t sure what he is asking at first. Then his eyes fill with peligin. The colour rises from the depths as a beast rises from the sea. She nods minutely. She is scared. She has never done this before. This is a line that she has never crossed.

He prepares the meal. She stays in their cabin. The harpoon is on the bed in front of her. She wonders if this is its influence. She is unnerved at the thought of her Stolid Crewman eating human flesh. But there’s no food left. And she’s already given him permission.

During dinner, the others stare at the table. They refuse to look at each other. She is drawn to his serene peligin gaze. She can’t hide her nerves. Not from him.

He meets her eyes and crooks that small, private smile at her. He raises his spoon in a tiny salute. Her throat is dry as sand. She takes a bite.

She nearly kills Mme. Lumiere. Stolid recognizes the bloodlust in her and drags her off. She wants to carve Lumiere into pieces and drown her world in red. He gently crushes her against his chest until she quiets. She slumps against him petulantly and he carries her back to the engine. She is not upset enough to commit the sensation to memory.


	13. Going to Ground

He sits beside her on a grassy knoll to watch the stars. He lets her worm between his arms without comment and lean her head back against his chest. The stars wheel above them, pinpricks of maddening light. She has never felt more grounded.

She thinks something is lurking in his eyes. There is a peculiar nervousness, a hesitation, when he looks at her. It makes it all the more enjoyable to drape herself across him and feel the slight stiffening - and then relaxation - of his muscles. 

Victory blindsides her completely. They are investigating a mound of cantakeri that have been twisted into a screaming, pained mass by the wild fungi of the void. She bounces on top of it and wonders whether or not it would be possible to collect a sample and grow it herself. Would it affect humans the same way? The Stolid Crewman scowls and jabs it with his harpoon whenever it oozes too much for his liking. One glance at him and she knows that sneaking some fungus aboard wouldn't be worth it. He would grimace and act disappointed. It is not like her to be deterred by someone's disappointment, but in this case she doesn't mind. He is hers and so will always be different. She can blunt a few of her sharp edges if it means he will be happy.

Some tests on the cantankeri will be enough to satisfy her. When she mentions this, his grin blinds her. It is sudden as a rising tide. He hefts his harpoon boyishly and says, "I love you."

The thrill of victory runs through her sweet as wine. Normally there is an anguished edge to her victories, but not this one. This one brings a wave of relief. 

It has the opposite effect on him.

He freezes, jerks and stutters back to motion. He begins sawing away at the cantankeri as though they could possibly matter anymore. She recognizes the trace of panic in his eyes and smirks. 

The Stolid Crewman goes to ground, like an animal hiding away. He snatches his notebook and retreats into the engine room. 

That night she sets a trap for him. If he is the prey, she is more than willing to become the predator. She waits in the bed and pretends to fall asleep. Normally it is a struggle to remain motionless for so long, but it is different when she is hunting. She is more than capable of setting up an ambush. 

That night he creeps into the room. He moves as quietly as a shadow crossing a star and she has never been so proud of him. He lowers himself onto the floor and leans against the bed.

That night she strikes like lightning. It is the purest expression of her love to snarl her fingers into his hair and yank his head back to reveal the smooth column of his throat. Any other prey and she would sink her knives into that pale skin and drown it in red. This time she waits long enough for him to force himself to remain still and for his heart to beat rabbit fast. She can see a vein pulsing with rich, hot blood from this angle. Her dangerous neath-creature is so vulnerable to her nails and knives that she cannot help brushing her lips against the shell of his ear. "I love you too," she whispers.

It is enough to break his paralysis. He twists around to kiss her and she is lost to his touch.

They claim each other that night and she is gentler than she first imagined she would be. The thought of hurting him in her bed sends a twist of distaste through her stomach, so she holds him close and smudges kisses against his skin. He shakes apart completely in her arms.

Afterwards, she curls coquettishly against him to stave off his awkward nervousness. She grins sharply when he asks if they are now a couple. The answer is obvious to her and it is so much fun to trace a finger down his collarbone and ask if that's what he wants. A flicker of irritation settles at the edge of his mouth and he tugs her closer. "Yes."


End file.
